A current reader's response to the article of 50 years ago by Karpman, B.(1949): "The principles and methods of objective psychotherapy"

The first aim is to describe the psychotherapy of 1949 in the light of toda y's psychotherapies. The old psychotherapy is suited to treating severely i ll patients. It does not use free association, but rather is focused on cur rent problems. It uses dreams, yet it also uses homework and bibliotherapy. The second aim is to critique the treatment. Consistent with its era, it d oes nor make use of medications, and there is an absence of references to p sychotherapy research, which was then just starting. The treatment relies o ver-heavily on the authority of the therapist. A third aim is to describe t he changes in our field in the past 50 years and examine the predictions fo r the future. Although the treatment is called objective psychotherapy, it does not make use of the most up-to-date means of measuring accuracy of int erpretations. such as the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method and other methods like it. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.